Aabhi jaao yahan se! VIP movement chal raha hay! (Now go away from here! VIP movement is going on!)
This is the reply one parking attendant got from a gun-wielding security person belonging to a central government agency when he was asked to move away a beacon-fitted car and the pilot vehicle accompanying it. The vehicles were happily parked along the kerb of the Kolkata airport’s terminal building.
“A government official was to arrive on a flight but the cars were standing on the kerbside for more than an hour. So, when our parking attendant approached the security person accompanying the vehicles, he shooed him away saying there was VIP movement,” said an official of Omega Enterprises, the private agency that manages the airport’s parking area and the lanes in front of the terminal.
“This is a common experience. Whenever we try to remove a VIP vehicle, they don’t pay any heed to us and often threaten our men.”
Lack of planning is one reason for the chaos of vehicles in front of the arrival area of the airport’s integrated terminal building. Another important factor is the old problem of beacon-fitted government vehicles occupying the kerbside for most of the day, particularly during rush hours.
The Telegraph has written about how lack of enough lanes in front of the arrival area and kerbs to separate the bays for vehicles leads to chaos. But an equal contributor to the problem is the long queue of VIP vehicles that practically reduce the number of usable lanes for private vehicles from five to four, said airport officials.
The parking agency official said that since they did not have the power to prosecute a vehicle flouting laws and can only slap fines, they are often helpless. The police, who have the authority to so, allegedly do nothing.
Last week, this newspaper saw “the VIP culture”.
So-called VIP cars — some of which had beacons and others were fitted with boards announcing that they belonged to one government agency or another — occupied almost all of the kerbside of the arrival area.
As a result, hapless and ordinary non-VIP passengers who had called their cars or app cabs to the lane saw the vehicles stand in the middle of the road. The passengers, senior citizens included,
had to lug their bags to the middle of the road to put them in the cars.
Around 9.30pm, outside the 2A exit gate, a car with
a “Government of West Bengal” sticker pulled up and parked on the kerbside, right under a signboard that read: “No Parking. Fine Rs 400 beyond three minutes dwell time and seven minutes running time”.
Right behind it was another car with a sticker that read “Govt of India, Ministry of Statistics”.
Both cars were parked there for at least 20 minute as the drivers stood outside.
Another car with a blue beacon and “Govt of Tripura” written just above the number plate occupied the kerbside for over 20 minutes outside the 3B exit.
Several cars with police stickers on the windshields also flouted the rules openly.
Whenever a car enters the airport, it is issued a slip that mentions the time of entry. Vehicles are allowed to stay on the airport premises free of charge for seven minutes. If a car stays longer, marshals hired by the airport are to collect a fine of Rs 400 from the driver, said an airport official.
This newspaper spent over an hour at the spot but did not see one marshal prosecute a car. The cops were missing in action too.
As the kerbside was occupied by a row of VIP cars, private vehicles and app cabs were often forced to form a second row, and sometimes, a third row.
The passengers, especially the elderly ones, took time dragging their luggage one by one to their cars. As a result, there were long queues of cars in the rows. Those behind, who had finished loading their luggage, were honking to get clearance.
An airport official said there was a parking lot dedicated for VIP cars but that remains empty always.
“We held a meeting with the police last week and soon the problem will be resolved. The police are planning to deploy more personnel to guide the VIP cars to their designated area and come in front of the terminal only when the passenger arrives,” said an official of Kolkata airport.
An officer of the Bidhannagar police commissionerate, too, said: “We will deploy more men to rein in errant vehicles.”
At Mumbai airport, too, there are no dedicated gates for VIP passengers in the arrival areas. “But provisions can be made as per requirement,” said a spokesperson for Mumbai International Airport Ltd.
“At the departures, we have gates 1 and 8 of terminal 2 that are utilised by VIP passengers,” said the spokesperson.